Liam Neeson: Bono Helped My Sons After Natasha Richardson's Death

Liam Neeson opened up about wife Natasha Richardson's death -- and how Bono helped his sons heal -- in an interview with Anderson Cooper on Feb. 23
Credit: Charles Eshelman/FilmMagic

Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson had the kind of special connection that comes around just once in a lifetime. Speaking about his late wife in his 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper on Sunday, Feb. 23, the Non-Stop actor recalled working and falling in love with her on Broadway in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's drama Anna Christie in 1993.

"She was a radiant beauty. Yeah, cascading hair. I remember," he told Cooper of Richardson, who died at age 45 in March 2009, after falling and hitting her head in a Montreal, Canada, skiing accident. "There was -- that was very, very attractive."

"I'd never had that kind of an explosive chemistry situation with an actor, or actress," he added. "She and I were like [Fred] Astaire and [Ginger] Rogers. We had just this wonderful kind of dance, free dance on stage every night, you know?"

The couple married in 1994 at their farm house in upstate New York. They had two kids, Micheal and Daniel, now 19 and 18, respectively.

"She cared for everybody," Neeson recalled of his late love, daughter of legendary actress Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson. "She has -- she has a motherly instinct. And she'd make dinners for everyone and just looked after us all. You know? I would always see the glass half-empty. She would see it half-full."

Richardson's sudden, tragic death left Neeson to raise their sons, 13 and 12 at the time of their mother's passing, by himself. To this day, he told Cooper, he occasionally gets "this profound feeling of instability." But he's doing "okay" as a single parent.

"You know, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I'm name-dropping for a second. Bono is a pal, and he came 'round to have a dinner," the Taken star said of the U2 singer and fellow Irishman. "And I remember he was sitting beside Micheal and, just out of the blue, he said, 'What age are you Micheal?' He said -- Micheal said, 'Thirteen.' And [Bono] said, 'Yeah, that's the age I was when I lost my mum.'"

"That was it. And it -- I -- I could've kissed him for it," Neeson continued. "He was, like, saying, 'You know, I lost my mom at this age and I'm doing okay. And you will do okay, too.'"

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